Season 5, Episode 8 - My Big Bird
January 24, 2006

A patient, Mr. Foster (Peter Jacobson), ends up dying unexpectedly so Dr. Kelso calls for an M&M (Morbidity and Mortality) conference to determine the cause and fault of his death. Going through the sequence of events in reverse, Mr. Foster first encounters Dr. Cox and then J.D. and Turk in radiology after coming to the hospital complaining of coughing and shortness of breath caused by a bout of pertussis on a recent trip to India. His radiology scan comes out clear. J.D. has him stay for more tests. The next day, Mr. Foster is dead. Before his death, J.D. has been attending to him, but he got distracted with another patient, Mr. Sutton (guest star Jason Bateman). J.D. caught his blocked artery situation just in time. Sutton left the hospital without thanking J.D. for saving his life, leaving J.D. feeling much unappreciated.

As the conference continues, Elliot's participation in Foster's case emerges. She had been caught making out with the father of one of her young patients by Carla and Mrs. Wilk (Michael Learned). Elliot assumed Jimmy was a widower when he told her that his wife "wasn't with us," so she made out with him. He literally meant that his wife wasn't with him and his son, she was out of town. When Jimmy's wife came Millie (Allison Smith) to the hospital and found out what happened she called Elliot a whore and tried to hunt her down. Elliot explained that there was a misunderstanding. J.D. asks Elliot to cover Mr. Foster for him while he tries to get a thank you from Mr. Sutton.

While at Sutton's house, J.D. and Turk encounter his pet ostriches, which act menacingly to them. Sutton declines to say thank you since J.D. was just doing his job. He points out that he's a garbage man and people never thank him for picking up his garbage. Back at the hospital, Elliot still hasn't tended to Mr. Foster because she's too busy hiding from Jimmy's angry wife Millie, so Carla is called to help. She's too busy prepping for the lottery, so she passes Foster off to Cox, who was at home. Then, Foster started coughing up blood, so the on-call surgeon, Turk, was paged. Turk was stuck in traffic, on his way back from Sutton's place. In the meantime, Elliot was taped to a wall, gagged, with a cartoon bubble above her head that said, "Hi, I'm a whore," courtesy of Millie. Foster was slowly dying, surrounded by clueless interns. After the details had been replayed, J.D., Elliot, Turk and Carla are shell-shocked. They manage to escape punishment when Doug from the morgue informs the conference that Foster died from a pulmonary embolism probably caused by the long plane ride from India. The radiologist should have caught in on his scan, so that gets the rest of them off the hook. Cox reminds them that they were lucky this time, but that they can never loose focus on their patients.

Carla and Janitor buy the group super lottery tickets and everyone fantasizes about what they would buy, but they don't win the big money. Carla would use the money so that Turk would have to carry their future baby in his stomach instead of her. Janitor would buy a trained shark and lure J.D. into his pool to be eaten. J.D.'s dream is to be Floating Head Doctor, where his head could be detached from his body so he could be two places at the same time. Elliot would use the winnings to find a decent man to fall in love with, which in her case, would be a robot.